Avia added, “And could you teach me to swim after that?”
Syn grabbed her hand and squeezed it tightly in answer.
The doors shut, and the family rose up to the surface above.
47
ARRIVAL
“The stars, that nature hung in heaven,
and filled their lamps with everlasting oil,
give due light to the misled and lonely traveler.”
Kapteyn’s Star slid toward the horizon, painting the resurrected ocean waves in somber hues of red and orange. The old star filled nearly an eighth of the sky when overhead. As it set, it appeared to spark the entire sky aflame.
On the banks of the Kerwen Ocean, past the lights of the first city to take root upon Àpáàdì, the thin, tall Avia, second of the two queens of this rebirthed world, listened to the heartbeat of the ocean with her eyes closed. The crimson light of Kapteyn’s Star reflected from her ebony skin like she was a mirror. The crash of the waves against the glass shores beat out a rhythm that she soaked into her soul, savoring each note.
“You’re late,” Avia said, eyes still closed and her smile wide.
Behind her, the first queen and the first human to set foot upon this planet, Syn of Paradise and Expected of the Ecology, laughed, “He wouldn’t stop talking. I didn’t want to be rude.”
“Wasn’t he the one to give the speech tonight?” Avia, stepped back, the wind whipping the folds of her white dress.
Syn stepped alongside her and took a deep breath. In the setting sun, her white hair glowed like a halo around her head. “I think he likes to make them wait.”
Somewhere around the edge of the outcrop, the sharp sound of children laughing came, bouncing across the churning waves.
“I would not want to stand before a million citizens, bot or human.”
Syn nudged her sister. “You wouldn’t want to stand and talk in front of three people, let alone a million.”
As if on cue, behind them, echoing through the streets of Ayanmo City, the Barlgharel’s voice announced, “Today, from far across the cerulean seas, from beyond the Kerwen Ocean’s lapping beaches, far inland through the burgeoning forests, from city to city to city, those translated through the heavens by Olorun herself, the members of the Ecology and the sons and daughters of the Expected, we once again celebrate our landing upon our home Àpáàdì. Today, we all lift our voices and celebrate the Day of Arrival!”
The cheers of the crowd went up, and although quite a distance beyond the city’s borders, Syn and Avia warmed to the sound. Avia reached over and probed for Syn’s hand, and finding it, gripped tightly. The two mothers of this world stood together, fingers interlaced, and remembered the catalog of years that had collected since they first met under that disheveled roof before a makeshift throne.
Syn whispered, “I’ve heard versions of the tale hundreds of times now, and it still seems unbelievable.”
As Kapteyn’s Star fell below the horizon, the evening lights of civilization’s footprints sparkled into view. Far away, a dozen twinkling buildings turned on—another city, the great nautical construction of Lyemọnja, transitioned into the night, likely preparing for their own holiday festivities.
Avia opened her eyes and focused on the towers rising up in the early twilight across the water. “There’s not enough nights to tell every part of the story. I’m beginning to even forget those first days here.”
The Ecology showed profound imagination when settling their new world. The masses gathered across the globe had swelled from their decimated numbers after their first exodus out of the dark Disc. Their numbers grew as they encountered the bots of Syn’s Disc. Slow change bloomed over time for Syn’s bots. Conversation showed the first changes. But over the years, as they interacted with the Ecology, the virus of intelligence spread, and they all awoke. Freedom and sentience brought its own challenges. The Ecology worked through each, and ultimately, the civilization that inhabited Olorun was only an echo of the humanity that had launched it. What set foot on Àpáàdì was not what the humans had planned for it. From those first steps, the bots grew their population, explored the crevices of their new world, and put down the foundations for their towering cities.
Amidst the burgeoning crowds, the children of Syn and Avia walked. Mastery of the wonders of the crèche brought forth new life. If Syn was the Expected of the Ecology, then Avia was the architect of the new humanity. She grasped the complicated engineering that brought forth new life in their image, molding their genetic templates, and incubating them through the crèche into early adolescence. The first few generations entered the world the same as Syn and Avia, each having Avia’s fingerprint deep on their cellular blueprint. But soon, nature took way, and the need for genetic engineering disappeared as their population grew.
As the humans and the bots had been transformed for their new world, so their new world transformed for them. The rivers that veined across Àpáàdì’s surface broke their banks as the ice caps melted and the air filled with carbon dioxide. Àpáàdì warmed again for life. The engineered animals were first to roam through the reawakened forests. Eku could not make the journey, but the forests were now the domain of her descendants, each tweaked to thrive on this planet’s new conditions.
Behind them, the Barlgharel’s speech reached their ears again. “Our Day of Arrival should also be a day of remembrance. No new shores are reached without sacrifice. Those who first imagined our home pushed off from the dock of Earth without the promise of arriving. In the intervening years, the sails unfurled, new hands would steer the course, and yet those new hands would never run their fingers through the soil of Àpáàdì. But they still steered straight through to the star before them. Monstrous obstacles arose and were met, often at great cost. As we celebrate Arrival, we also give gratitude for those who did not arrive.”
Avia ventured a question in the quiet gap the speech brought, “Do you think he would’ve liked it?”
Syn answered with a tear. “He would’ve loved it.”
Avia squeezed her sister’s hand. “Blip was more wonderful than we ever realized.”
Syn shook her head. “No. I realized it. It’s in the few moments that I’m alone that I miss him the most. I feel him the most when no one else is there. He was there when I first woke, and only in those quiet times do I get the sense he’s still with me.”
“Shhh. Listen.”
Syn did as asked. The repetitious lapping of the waves on the shore was all that could be heard.
Avia explained, “We’re alone now.”
Syn’s smile went wide, even as another tear rolled down her cheek. “Oh, wow. This is rare.”
“Do you feel him now? Is he here?”
Syn willed herself to feel. In the dark of the growing night, in the hollow of the absent crowds and adoring children, she felt the weight of him in the air next to her, where he always used to be. The nearly unheard hum of his circuits as he served as her companion. “Yes. I do. He is.”
Blip had never left Olorun. In the rampant expanse of Olorun’s spreading insanity, he had chosen the only path that guaranteed Arrival—he chose to merge himself with her; to transfer his consciousness into the ship itself, to fight against her spreading machinations, and ultimately, to reset the ship and allow for settlement upon Àpáàdì.
Avia’s eyes shot toward the sky.
Syn followed her look and smiled as she saw what caught her sister’s attention.
Above them, a single light flashed far above them and moved against the backdrop of the reappearing stars.
Olorun.
The ship moved in orbit, a constant sentry reminding the settlers of their past and a call to their future.